푸드트럭, 소셜미디어, 유동하는 쿠바 음식문화

Abstract

This article examines ethnic and regional food culture in the United States, focusing on the Jon Favreau film Chef, and analyzes the intertextual impact of sharing food photos in social media spaces on the practice of food consumption and production in the real world. A summary and main research findings are as follows. First, in Chef, America’s diverse ethnic and regional food culture is portrayed through cinematic images of various ingredients and urban spaces along the main characters’ journey to Miami, New Orleans, Austin, and Los Angeles. Each city’s locality and food culture are complexly expressed through unique street scenes that preserve the local history and culture, famous restaurants that have become local attractions, colorful and lively food images, sounds generated during the cooking process, and cheerful background music. Second, this film can enhance understanding of the motivation for setting up and operating food trucks in the U.S. For the protagonist, Carl Casper, Cuban food and food trucks serve as symbols and infrastructure that guarantee his professional autonomy and creativity as a chef. By analyzing its storyline and dialogue, this article examines the ways, meanings, and repercussions of food culture representation in the media by those in the restaurant industry who prepare and sell food themselves, not by food consumers. To recapitulate, Chef is valuable as educational content in that it vividly introduces America’s diverse ethnic and regional food culture, farmers’ markets, and food truck culture. This article will contribute to a better understanding of how the prevalence of digital media can affect and socially reorganize food culture by examining the establishment and operation of food trucks in the U.S. through the film and the relationship between food truck businesses and social network services.